Longevity[lon-jev-i-tee]nounLiving a long life; influenced by genetics, environment, and lifestyle.Learn MoreClose is trainable if you know where to focus your efforts. We did the research for you.

Stand on one foot. Close your eyes. Start a timer.

If you can’t hold it for 10 seconds, a 2022 study in the British Journal of Sports Medicine found you are 84 percent more likely to die over the next 7 to 10 years than people who can.

That’s not a supplement company’s claim. That’s peer-reviewed data, from a test that cost nothing, took no equipment, and just told you something an aging clock can’t: how your body is actually holding up.

The longevity industry doesn’t want you to know this. There’s a reason $80 billion a year flows into aging clock tests, peptide injections, and shelves of supplements, and almost none of it flows into the 30-second tests you can do on your living room floor. Measurement you can buy is profitable. Measurement you can already do is not.

But here’s what the science actually says: roughly half of how long and well you live comes down to lifestyle, and the parts of lifestyle that matter most show up in eight measurable, trainable markers. Strong grip. A VO2 max[vee-oh-too maks]nounA measurement of how much oxygen your body can use during exercise.Learn MoreClose that puts you in the right range for your age. The ability to catch yourself when you stumble. Enough working memory to follow a conversation without losing the thread. Relationships that keep your nervous system regulated. Each one is a window into how the whole system is functioning, and each one responds to training in weeks, not decades.

Before we get into the markers, Super Age just launched the first fitness event that trains the markers of longevity: The Super Age Games. Sign up and train with a community of people who know that healthspan[helth-span]nounThe number of years you live in good health, free from chronic illness or disability.Learn MoreClose matters.

Eight Trainable Longevity Markers That Extend Your Life

Nutrition, sleep, and nervous system regulation are inputs: they fuel and restore the system. The eight markers below are outputs: the measurable evidence that the inputs are working. When your grip, balance, VO2 max, and working memory are strong, it’s because your food, sleep, stress regulation, and training are landing. The outputs are the scoreboard. They tell you whether everything else is adding up, today, in your body, without a subscription.

Here are the elite eight longevity markers:

1. VO2 Max
2. Grip Strength[grip strength]nounA key marker of strength and predictor of longevity.Learn MoreClose
3. Balance
4. Agility
5. Working Memory
6. Relational Capacity
7. Functional Strength[fuhngk-shuh-nl strength]nounStrength that translates to everyday tasks and movements.Learn MoreClose
8. Endurance Under Load

Every one can be tested in your living room, at the gym, or on a track, in under five minutes, with a clear numeric result. Grip a $30 dynamometer. Stand on one foot. Run the Cooper Test. The numbers you get won’t just tell you where you stand. They’ll tell you where to aim.

As Nathan Price, PhD, co-director of the Center for Human Healthspan at the Buck Institute, put it when we asked him about VO2 max: “You can’t gimmick it. You can’t take a pill and see it shoot up. It shows a lifetime of discipline.”

That’s the thing about real longevity markers. They can’t be faked. They can only be trained. Here’s how to test each of the eight, what the research reveals about what your numbers mean, and exactly how to move the needle.

The Marker: VO2 Max

What Is VO2 Max?

When you exercise, your muscles need oxygen for energy. Oxygen is delivered to your muscles via your bloodstream, and it gets sucked into your muscle cells, where organelles called mitochondria[mahy-tuh-kon-dree-uh]nounOrganelles in cells responsible for producing energy (ATP), often called the powerhouse of the cell.Learn MoreClose (little energy factories in your cells) can use the oxygen to make adenosine triphosphate, or ATP. Think of ATP as like gasoline for muscle contraction. Your cells start out with crude oil (usually from glucose delivered via the bloodstream), and your mitochondria use oxygen to process the crude into gasoline … ATP.

The harder your muscles work, the more oxygen they need. But there’s a peak level your body can use at once before the energy factories get overloaded. That’s your VO2 Max: It’s the maximum (Max) volume (V) of oxygen (O2) that your body can process and use during exercise.

Why Does VO2 Max Matter For Longevity and Healthspan?

VO2 Max is a key indicator of fitness, and also of how long you’ll live. In a 2018 study that looked at more than 100,000 people, those with the highest VO2 maxes lived longer. Improving even a little helps: In the same study, those in the “below average” group had less than half the mortality rate of those in the “low” group over an average 8-year follow-up. Another study found that, in men, for every one unit increase in VO2 Max, lifespan increased by 45 days.

A 2022 analysis of more than 750,000 veterans in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology found that each one-MET improvement in fitness was linked to a 13–15 percent lower mortality risk, regardless of age, sex, BMI, or health conditions.

But VO2 Max isn’t just about living longer, says Nathan Price, Ph.D., professor and co-director of the Center for Human Healthspan at the Buck Institute.

“It captures so many different things. It’s an integration of muscle health, lung capacity, mitochondrial health,” he says. A high VO2 Max shows not only that you have a lot of mitochondria, that can use oxygen to produce energy, but that the mitochondria you have are working efficiently.

VO2 Max, Price says, is also an indicator that you’ve been putting in the work to live longer and better. “If you have a high VO2 max, you exercise a lot, you exercise intensely, and you’ve been doing it for a long time. You can’t gimmick it. You can’t take a pill and see your VO2 Max shoot up. So it shows a lifetime of discipline in that way.”

How To Test Your VO2 Max at Home

Your VO2 Max can be measured in a lab, but you can also test it on your own with minimal equipment. You can use your gym’s Concept2 rowing machine if you’ve got experience with a rower, rowing 2000 meters as fast as you can, then plugging the numbers into a simple calculator.

If you’re not a regular rower, though, your form may hold you back from getting an accurate reading. Instead, head to a local track and run as far as you can in 12 minutes. This test, called the Cooper Test (or 12-minute Run Test) has been used to determine VO2 Max by the U.S. military for more than 50 years … and it’s surprisingly accurate for a low-tech test.

Here’s what you do:

1. After warming up, run as far as you can in 12 minutes.

2. Note how many laps you ran, including any partial laps at the end. A standard track is 400 meters around, so estimate any half-laps.

3. Plug your distance into the chart.

So if you’re a woman in your 40s, and you run 5 laps in 12 minutes, that’s 2000 meters, so you’re on the high end of the “average” range. If you’re a man in his 30s, and you run 6.5 laps in 12 minutes, you’ve gone 2600 meters. That’s the upper range of “good.”

How To Improve Your VO2 Max

If there’s one single metric to focus on improving it’s your VO2 Max. Your VO2 Max increases when your mitochondria become more efficient, letting each one use more oxygen, and when you make more mitochondria overall, meaning there are more factories in each muscle cell to use more oxygen.

Both of these processes happen when you do cardiovascular exercise.

Slower, aerobic exercise does both of these, and when you do more of it, you often get a bigger effect on mitochondrial biogenesis, the making of new mitochondria. That’s why you’ve heard so much about Zone 2 exercise in the past few years.

Zone 2 exercise, performed around the level where you can still speak in full sentences, but just barely, builds mitochondria, but is easy enough that you can do lots of it during the week without getting injured or too sore. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends 150 minutes per week of this kind of moderate-intensity exercise.

More intense exercise near your current max also improves VO2 Max. Especially when you’re new to cardio (or if you haven’t done it in a while), work of this type can create rapid increases in VO2 Max; this effect becomes less dramatic, but still significant, the longer you train.

VO2 Max-level work is usually done in high-intensity interval training sessions, where bouts of intense work are alternated with easier work. In many interval workouts, the length of each work interval stays the same throughout the workout, but in 2020, scientists in Italy found that doing intervals that decreased in length over the course of the workout created similar VO2 Max improvements.

In these workouts, people performed intervals that stepped down:

• They did 3 minutes of work at 90 percent of max heart rate, then 2 minutes of recovery at an easy pace.
• Then 2 minutes of hard work, and 1:20 of recovery. 
• Then 1 minute of hard work, and 40 seconds recovery.
• Then 45 seconds of work, 30 seconds of recovery.
• And finally 30 seconds of work, with 20 seconds of recovery.

This version of interval training may be easier to maintain and complete while still providing the same effects as equal-length intervals.

The Marker: Grip Strength

What Is Grip Strength?

How hard you can grab and squeeze something, measured in pounds or kilograms of force.

Why Does Grip Strength Matter for Longevity and Healthspan?

Grip strength itself is associated with longer life, lower disease risk, cognitive ability, and even aging at the DNA level. In a study of 12,000 adults age 50 or older, those with weaker grips were 45 percent more likely to die over the course of the study than those with the strongest grip. And a study of more than 142,000 people found that for every 11-pound reduction in grip strength, the risk of death by stroke increased by 9 percent, the risk of a deadly heart attack increased by 7 percent, and overall risk of cardiovascular disease death increased by 17 percent. 

A 2018 meta-analysis pooling nearly two million people across 38 studies found that people in the strongest grip group had a 31 percent lower risk of death from any cause than those in the weakest.

And a February 2026 JAMA Network Open study of 5,472 women aged 63 to 99 went further, finding that the strongest grip group had a 33 percent lower mortality risk than the weakest, an association that held even among women who were not meeting aerobic exercise guidelines. In other words, strength confers protection that cardio alone cannot.

The reason for all this correlation isn’t due directly to grip strength, Price says. Unless you’re a rock climber, arm wrestler, or other person who specifically trains their grip to be extra-strong, grip strength is a good stand-in for all-over body strength and muscle mass[muh-suhl mas]nounThe total weight of muscle in your body, critical for longevity.Learn MoreClose. Some studies have found that people with lower grip strength have more problems with lower-body-strength-related tasks, like climbing stairs. And grip strength is easier to test en masse than, say, bench press or barbell squat max.

Having more muscle mass reduces your risk of mortality and frailty: A 2014 cohort study found that people in the top quarter of muscle mass reduced their risk of early death by 19 percent compared to the bottom 25 percent in muscle mass. And those who retain more muscle as they age increase their years of healthy, independent living: in other words they extend their healthspan.

How to Test Your Grip Strength

In research studies, scientists use a device called a dynamometer to test grip. It’s a device with a handle; when it’s grabbed and squeezed, a digital readout shows grip strength in pounds or kilograms. These devices are pretty cheap, you can get one for about $30 online, and they’re fun to use.

To get a reading the way they do in laboratories, sit in a chair with your elbow bent 90 degrees, your upper arms at your side. Then squeeze the handle.

A “good” grip strength depends on your age and gender. In a research review looking at data from 69 countries, peak grip strength occurred between ages 30-39. In this group, the average grip strength was 109 pounds (49.7 kg) for men, and 65.3 pounds (29.7 kg) for women.

How To Improve Grip Strength

Since grip strength is a proxy for total-body strength, you’ll want to strengthen your whole body, rather than isolating grip strength itself.

Strength training[strength tray-ning]nounResistance-based exercise to build muscle and support healthy aging.Learn MoreClose with exercises that use your grip—whether that’s chinups, pullups, rows, lunges, farmer carries, squats with dumbbells, or any other exercise where your hand is challenged during the exercise—can build muscle and strengthen your grip at the same time. Whatever moves you choose, focus on progressive overload in your workouts: This concept is the idea that you increase the total amount you lift in a workout or week over time, whether by increasing the number of sets or repetitions, the weight on the bar or dumbbell, or the number of exercises you do for a specific movement pattern or body part. 

The Marker: Working Memory

What is Working Memory?

Short- and long-term memory are pretty self-explanatory: they refer to your ability to store information in the short or long term. Working memory is a little different. It’s your ability to take in information in the short-term, hold onto it, and then work with it. When someone gives you directions and you remember them while following them, that’s working memory. You also use it during conversation when listening to someone, but also hanging onto information you’ll use in your response.

Working memory allows you to follow instructions, solve problems, learn new skills, and make decisions.

Why Working Memory Matters for Longevity and Healthspan

Working memory slips in early adulthood alongside long-term memory, attention span, and other executive functions, and continues to do so until the end of your life.

The research connects lower working memory performance to higher mortality risk. A 2008 analysis of more than 3,000 people in the Cardiovascular Health Study, followed for more than 8 years, found that lower scores on the Digit Symbol Substitution Test, a standard measure of working memory and processing speed, predicted significantly higher mortality in well-functioning older adults. The association held even after accounting for age, cardiovascular disease, physical activity, and brain MRI abnormalities. When low cognitive scores appeared alongside slower gait, mortality rates were nearly four times higher than in those with strong scores on both.

“One thing that may not be fully appreciated [by the general public] is how much energy it takes to run your brain. Your brain is 2 percent of your biomass, and consumes 20 percent of your energy,” Price says. “One of the things that happens as you get older is your ability to perfuse oxygen into your brain goes down. And so it becomes harder to keep neurons alive by keeping enough energy to sustain them. I actually think this is one of the dominant triggers into dementia.”

As we age, Price says, and the number of neurons goes down, processing in our brain can lose its efficiency: we aren’t as good at delivering the oxygen the brain needs to fuel itself, so the neurons that remain don’t work as well. If we can maintain our ability to deliver that oxygen, we can maintain more brain … and we won’t have to red-line our mind’s cells to do the same types of tasks. This ability to operate our brain without going to its absolute limit, Price says, is called a “cognitive reserve[kog-ni-tiv ri-zurv]nounThe brain’s resilience to aging and damage through learning and mental stimulation.Learn MoreClose.” Working memory offers a window into whether we’ve got this excess mental capacity.

Research from Northwestern’s Mesulam Center for Cognitive Neurology has identified “SuperAgers,” adults over 80 whose memory matches that of people in their 50s and 60s. Their brains show preserved cortical thickness and resist age-related atrophy, suggesting sharp memory in late life is a trainable biological state, not just good genes.

How to Test Your Working Memory

Try a digit span test. This test, used in many research studies on working memory going back more than 100 years, is about remembering sequences of numbers and repeating them back. Some sequences are repeated just as they’re presented, while in others, the numbers must be repeated backwards.

The sequences start with two numbers, then go up by one number at a time. So you’ll be asked to remember two numbers (say 5, 2) and repeat it back. Succeed, and you’ll get a three-number sequence, like 7-4-8. Repeat it back, and then it’s a four-number sequence. The highest number you can repeat back is your forwards score.

Then comes the backwards version: It’s the same thing, except the numbers are repeated back in reverse order. So if the numbers are 7-4-8, the answer is 8-4-7. The highest number of numbers you can repeat is your reverse score.

Most people can do two more numbers forward than they can backwards.

You can try one of these tests at this link.

What’s a Good Score?

Forward span scores:

• 7-9 digits: Above average working memory
• 5-6 digits: Perfectly normal range
• 3-4 digits: Still within normal, just on the lower end.

Backward span scores:

• ‍5-6 digits: Exceptional 
• 3-4 digits: Typical 
• 2-3 digits: Normal, but indicates working memory challenges.

How to Improve Your Working Memory

Exercise is the best-established way. A 2018 meta-analysis of 36 randomized trials in adults over 50 found that aerobic exercise, resistance training, multicomponent training, and tai chi all improved cognitive function, including working memory, regardless of people’s baseline cognitive status.

Direct working memory training also helps. A 2019 meta-analysis of 27 randomized trials in healthy older adults found that practicing tasks like n-back and digit span produced small but durable gains in working memory performance that lasted beyond the training period.

If you want to add a little extra oomph to your efforts, you could also do Sudoku puzzles. There’s not strong evidence that these types of puzzles help with cognitive function and working memory on their own, but in a July 2025 study, older adults who did both puzzle-solving and regular moderate-vigorous exercise saw benefits to their brain’s processing speeds and executive function, which includes working memory.

The Marker: Balance

What Is Balance?

It’s kind of self-explanatory, but also kind of isn’t: There are two kinds of balance, static and dynamic. Static balance is your ability to maintain your center of gravity while stationary, like while standing on one foot. Dynamic balance is your ability to maintain your center of gravity while you’re moving; we’ve folded that into the next marker, agility.

“Balance is the ability to stand your ground without being shaken,” says Junior Kennedy, a New York-based trainer and Super Age Games Lead Trainer. “And agility is the ability to move at any time.”

Why Does Balance Matter For Longevity and Healthspan?

If you can’t balance, you’re more likely to die. In a 2022 study from the British Journal of Sports Medicine that followed 1,700 middle-aged and older adults, those who could not stand on one leg for 10 seconds were 84 percent more likely to die during the next 11 years.

A 2024 Mayo Clinic study published in PLOS ONE found that single-leg balance deteriorates faster than grip or knee strength as we age. It drops about 2.2 seconds per decade on the non-dominant leg, making it one of the earliest physical signals that something is changing, and one of the most trainable.

Why? Because they fall down.

“One of the biggest indicators that an older person is going to die is if they fall,” says Price. When people fall and break a hip, for example, there’s a 50 percent chance they’ll die in the ensuing five years.

It’s not the fall itself that kills you, Price says. It’s the fact that after you fall, you can’t move around as much. “As soon as you fall, you break something like your hip, and you become immobile.”

Impaired balance can also be an indication of other issues, because it ties so many things together: If you can’t balance well, it could be due to a lack of muscle strength or poor coordination, but it could also be due to problems with cognition, and could be an indicator of a neurological condition.

How to Test Your Balance

The simplest test is to stand on one foot, with your eyes open. See how long you can hold the position on each leg.

To make this tougher, close your eyes. Doing so challenges proprioception, your ability to feel the position of your body in space. In multiple studies, scientists have timed people of different ages doing this test, so we’ve got average standards to shoot for:The simplest test is to stand on one foot, with your eyes open. See how long you can hold the position on each leg.

To make this tougher, close your eyes. Doing so challenges proprioception, your ability to feel the position of your body in space. In a study of 549 healthy adults, researchers measured single-leg stance times across age groups. Here’s what’s typical:

The average closed-eyes, single-leg stances for men:

• Age 20-39: 21 seconds
• Age 40-59: 18 seconds
• Age 60-80: 9 seconds

For women:

• Age 60-80: 7.5 seconds
• Age 20-39: 17 seconds
• Age 40-59: 15 seconds

The eyes-closed times decline faster because they remove vision as a balance crutch. If you can hold eyes-closed single-leg stance for longer than the average for your decade, your proprioception is in good shape.

How to Improve Your Balance

One way, Price suggests, is just to practice.

“If you’re in the back of a meeting, stand on one leg, or lift one leg a little off the ground and rotate it back and forth,” he says. You can also do this while talking on the phone, watching TV, brushing your teeth, or any other static activity.

Strength training in general has been shown to help with balance. But one exercise that stands out are lunges. In one study of middle-aged women, scientists had groups do lunges on stable or unstable surfaces. The wiggly-surface work improved balance more, but those who lunged on stable surfaces also reaped balance bennies.

Some lunge tips:

• Step forward far enough that when you descend, your knees both form 90-degree angles.
• Stepping backward instead of forward may provide more balance.
• Keep your chest up, and your head in line with your spine.
• Instead of alternating, do all your reps on one side, then do the same number on the other side.

If you’re feeling wobbly, you can make lunges more stable by performing them in line: When you step forward, step in slightly so that your lunging foot is closer to being in line with your trailing knee. In one study, doing so helped people maintain their balance better while doing the move when compared to stepping directly forward.

The Marker: Agility

What Is Agility?

Agility is your ability to maintain balance when you’re moving, Price says. It’s also how well you can react to an outside stimulus and adjust your movement— slowing down, changing direction, or speeding up in response to what’s happening around you.

For example, Price says: If you start to fall down, can you catch yourself? That’s agility.

But it’s also required for just about everything we do, Kennedy says.

“Walking down the street, making a quick turn, being able to have a quick reaction to or stepping out of the way of something,” all require agility, he says.

Why Agility Matters for Longevity and Healthspan

Besides keeping you on your feet (and out of the hospital after a fall), agility’s essential for for aging well and living independently. It’s key for getting up and down out of chairs, and for walking. As our agility decreases with age, so does our gait speed. And when your gait speed slows down, your risk of dying goes up: A landmark 2011 pooled analysis in JAMA, covering 34,485 older adults across nine cohorts, found that every 0.1 meters per second improvement in gait speed was associated with roughly a 12 percent reduction in mortality risk.

For those of us thinking in feet and inches, that’s about 4 inches per second. A person walking at 3 feet 10 inches per second who picked up their pace to 4 feet 2 inches per second would see roughly a 12 percent drop in mortality risk over the coming years.

A loss of agility is also associated with less confidence in what your body can do, and as a result, avoiding more daily activities. So when you’re less agile, you’re less active. And when you’re less active, you’re more likely to end your healthspan and die.

How to Test Your Agility

One of the most well-documented tests for agility is the sit-to-stand test. It measures how many times you can get up and down out of a chair without using your hands in 30 seconds. For older adults, scoring below age- and gender-based averages is related to increased fall risk, and also impaired lung function and the potential for cardiac events.

It’s also useful for younger Super Agers: When scientists tested people in their 20s on this test, higher scores were found to be a pretty accurate measure of fitness measures like aerobic capacity and overall endurance.

Set a timer for 30 seconds, and follow the procedure listed here. Then compare your score to the averages below.

How to do it:

1. Put a sturdy chair against a wall, and sit down with your feet flat and arms crossed across your chest. Set a timer for 30 seconds. Start the timer.

2. With your arms still crossed across your chest, stand all the way up until your knees are extended.

3. Then lower yourself back into the chair.

4. Count how many times you can stand up and sit back down before time expires.

Scoring: For older adults, average sit-to-stand scores, according to the CDC:

• 60-64: 14 for men, 12 for women
• 65–69: 12 for men, 11 for women
• 70-74: 12 for men, 10 for women
• 75–79: 11 for men, 10 for women
• 80–84: 10 for men, 9 for women
• 85–89:  8 for men and women
• 90–94: 7 for men, 4 for women

If you’re younger than all of these age ranges, crank the timer to a minute and see how you fare against people in their 20s: In a study of 7,000 people from Switzerland:

• men aged 20-24 averaged 52 repetitions in 60 seconds;
• women aged 20-24 averaged 47 in 60 seconds

How to Improve Your Agility

Kennedy suggests incorporating three types of movements into your workouts to increase agility:

• Marches: With or without weights in your hands, stand tall and walk forward (or in place) with high knees.

• Weighted carries with changes in direction: Holding dumbbells at your sides, a single dumbbell in one hand, or a sandbag or other weight, walk while carrying the weight, changing directions. This could involve serpentining around cones, walking in a zig-zag pattern, or even just turning around at the end of a distance and coming back. 

• Controlled Up-Downs: Getting up from your stomach to a standing position requires agility, Kennedy says, and so does getting back down. Don’t drop like you’re in high school football practice, though: Move quickly, but under control, to get down to the floor, then push yourself back to standing. Repeat. Try doing this move for 30 seconds to start.

The Marker: Relational Capacity

What Is Relational Capacity?

Being a “lone wolf” sounds great, but relationships are key to healthy aging. Your relational capacity is a measure of your ability to build and maintain relationships based on trust. 

There are two kinds of trust that are key to this capacity, says Taylor Nicole West, Ph.D., a postdoctoral researcher at the University of North Carolina: Trust in society in general, and interpersonal trust with people you know. And these two types of trust, she says, feed into one another.

People with a healthy relational capacity score high on measures of “social integration,” as well as psychology scales of having “positive relations with others.”

Why Relational Capacity Matters for Longevity and Healthspan

People with close ties and good friends have a 19 percent lower risk of stroke, and a 24 percent reduced risk of early death. They’re less likely to suffer from depression and anxiety. They’re less likely to die of cardiovascular disease. They have lower levels of chronic inflammation. And those with high levels of social support are actually aging more slowly than people without the support.

A 2015 follow-up meta-analysis covering more than 3.4 million people confirmed that loneliness raises mortality risk by 26 percent, social isolation by 29 percent, and living alone by 32 percent, an effect that exceeds the mortality risk of obesity.

Trust matters, too: People who have more trust (not just in those they know, but in society at large) feel better and are more satisfied with their lives than people who feel less trust.

Your relational capacity can also impact your physical well-being as you age: People who score higher on tests of “positive relations with others” are less likely to die, but they’re also less likely to experience functional limits.

How to Test your Relational Capacity

Give yourself this seven-question survey. It’s based on the “positive relations with others” scale, from the Ryff scale, a widely used measure of psychological well-being.

People who score high on “positive relations with others” have warm, trusting, satisfying relationships with others. They understand the give and take of human relationships. And they’re capable of strong empathy and affection.

The questionnaire (Rate each statement on a scale of 1-6, where 1 is “strongly disagree,” and 6 is “strongly agree”):

1. People would describe me as a giving person, willing to share my time with others.
2. Most people see me as loving and affectionate.
3. I enjoy personal and mutual conversations with family members and friends.
4. I know I can trust my friends, and they know they can trust me.
5. Maintaining close relationships has been easy and rewarding for me.
6. I have plenty of close friends I can share my concerns with.
7. I have experienced many warm and trusting relationships with others.

Scoring: Add up your answers. Your total will fall between 7 and 42.

• 35–42: Strong relational capacity

• 25–34: Solid, with room to deepen

• 17–24: Worth focusing on. Small shifts can make a real difference

• 7–16: This is a good area to invest in

How to Improve Your Relational Capacity

Here are four simple strategies to strengthen your relationships and improve your trust in others (and their trust in you) from West and another friendship scientist, Jeffrey Hall, Ph.D., director of the Relationships and Technology Lab at the University of Kansas.

1. Don’t fall for inertia. Contact people you know and trust regularly: A lot’s been said about how only in-person reactions make us less lonely, and digital touchpoints don’t count. But that’s not really true, Hall says. A decade ago, when Facebook was a way to know what was going on in acquaintances’ and close friends’ lives, even if you didn’t interact with them, there was utility for our social well-being.

In the algorithm-driven social world, that’s gone. So you’ve got to be intentional, he says. If you’re in a group chat with people, participate in that group chat. If you’re thinking of an old friend, drop them a quick message. And for people you’re closest with, make sure you’re touching base at least once per week, even if it’s just to say hi or send a funny meme.

2. Build societal trust by talking to people: Trust has eroded in the U.S. In a 2018 survey by Pew, only 34 percent of Americans said “most people can be trusted”; in 1972, 46 percent of people in the U.S. thought so. Compare that to our northern neighbor: More than half of Canadians say most people can be trusted.

In her research, West has found that when we don’t trust our community, we’re less likely to have quality social interactions when we’re out in the world. But when we make ourselves have interactions, by talking to more people, we can improve our trust in our community, and in people in general.

West’s prescription: Send yourself on new people-talking scavenger hunts. In the next week, choose a type of person you’ll start conversations with—someone in a fun shirt, a person walking a dog, or or someone doing an activity you want to learn more about—and try to strike up a few conversations with these types of people when you’re out in public.

Piling up these types of interactions, she says, can have a cumulative effect on your trust in others, and make you more likely to have a greater relational capacity.

3. Deepen connections with “Fast Friends” questions: In a study she’s working on now, West had people deepen overall trust by deepening their relationships with people they already care about. To do so, she had them use parts of a psychological protocol called “Fast Friends,” a series of questions designed to enhance closeness. Some of these are fun, like “Given the choice of anyone in the world, whom would you want as a dinner guest?” Others are more probing, like “when was the last time you cried in front of another person?”

To make these work, West suggests starting with some of the easier questions, and also starting by sharing something yourself. When meeting up or even texting with a close friend, family member, or acquaintance, offer up an answer to one of these yourself (like how you’d love to have dinner with Arnold Schwarzenegger) and then ask them to chime in. 

Asking and answering a few of these types of exercises each week can deepen your trust in that relationship, and also improve your overall trust, she says.

4. Switch up the context of relationships to deepen relationships: If you want to become better friends with someone who’s a new friend or a close acquaintance, Hall says, try changing up the context or venue of the relationship. For example, if you’re in a group chat with your fantasy football league, and you’d like to become closer friends with one of the members, ask them to do something in a different venue, like watching a game at a club, or even just text them off-list.

“That signals to the other person, ‘I’m picking you out of a group of others to talk to, because I prefer you to these other people,’” he says. “That’s actually what friendship is at some level. It’s a recognition of mutual preference for one another compared to other people.”

The Marker: Functional Strength

What Is Functional Strength?

Functional strength is about how you can apply your strength in real world situations and movements.

The movements we need to function, Price says, involve precise coordination between our muscles, joints, nervous system, and balance. Something as “simple” as climbing up and down stairs is dazzlingly intricate.

“We underestimate how hard a lot of the different movements we make are,” he says. “Look at the world of robotics as it’s been built out … in the early days, things like [having robots] walking was impossibly hard.”

The robot could have superhuman strength, but couldn’t apply it to function like a human. How you can apply your own absolute strength to real world obstacles and movement patterns (moving when one leg is higher than the other, reaching and turning, stopping and starting) is your functional strength.

Why does functional strength matter for healthspan and longevity?

One of the key drivers of healthspan is “functional capacity,” which is a person’s ability to do the tasks they need to do to live independently. When you’re not functionally strong, you can’t do these tasks and movements. And when you can’t live independently, your healthspan effectively ends.

Functional strength is also important for our well-being, Price says. 

“I think about this as I’m zooming through the airport. You see that older person, and there’s a step down in function,” he says. They can’t walk as fast, and have trouble with the functional movements required to travel, like climbing and descending stairs, lifting their bag, and navigating foot traffic. These types of movements, as well as getting up and down off the floor to play with kids, carrying groceries, washing the car … they all require functional strength.

How to Test Your Functional Strength

Functional strength doesn’t have a single lab test, which is part of the point. It shows up in how you move through the world: sitting, standing, lifting, catching yourself. The test that captures the most of it at once is the Sitting-Rising Test (SRT), first validated in a landmark 2014 study in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology led by Brazilian exercise physiologist Claudio Gil Araújo, MD, PhD, and his team.

The SRT measures the full-body coordination of strength, flexibility, and balance it takes to sit down on the floor and stand back up. A 2025 prospective study of 4,282 adults aged 46–75, followed for a median of 12 years, found that SRT scores independently predicted both natural and cardiovascular mortality, even after controlling for age, sex, and body composition. An earlier 2014 study in the same journal found that people scoring in the lowest range (0–3 out of 10) had roughly five to six times the mortality risk of those scoring 8–10.

How to do it: From a standing position, lower yourself to a cross-legged seat on the floor, then stand back up. You start with a score of 10 (5 points for sitting, 5 for rising). Subtract one point each time you use a hand, forearm, knee, side of your leg, or the wall for support. Subtract half a point if you wobble or lose balance. The closer to 10, the better your strength, flexibility, and balance are working together to support the full range of real-life movement patterns.

Score yourself on the Sitting-Rising Test. Find a clear patch of floor, start standing, and go. Don’t worry if your number is lower than you expected. That’s useful information, and it’s trainable: research from Araújo’s team shows scores improve with regular strength, mobilitymoh-bil-i-tee]nounThe ability to move freely and easily through a full range of motion.Learn MoreClose, and balance work.

How to Improve Your Functional Strength

There’s lots you can do in the gym. But another way to maintain functional strength, Price says, is to not give up on playing sports.

“Racket sports, for example, are particularly good: You have to have focus, coordination, hit something at speed,” he says, all movements and actions that require and improve functional strength. Studies have found that people who play racket sports are less likely to suffer early death than people who participate in other types of athletic activity.

“We probably give up on these things a little too young. And then you lose your explosive power. One of the ways to stay resilient is to stay active.”

The Marker: Endurance Under Load

What Is Endurance Under Load?

It’s our ability to continue to move, to walk, hike, run, or move in some other way, while we’re fighting against a weight. As with functional strength, this could be carrying bags of groceries to your car or a child through a park. But the load doesn’t even need to be external, Kennedy says.

“Our body is a load in itself,” he says. So even walking normally is endurance under load. If the intensity of that movement changes by going up a hill or walking on less-firm terrain, the load changes. And it does, too, with changes in your body. “We are going to have to learn and understand how to carry that over time. In its simplest form, [endurance under load] is doing exactly what our body needs. That’s it.”

Why Does Endurance Under Load Matter for Healthspan and Longevity?

When we’re able to walk longer, we live longer: in a 2025 Annals of Internal Medicine study of 33,560 UK adults who were taking 8,000 or fewer daily steps, those who accumulated most of their steps in walking bouts of 15 minutes or more had roughly one-fifth the 9.5-year mortality of those whose longest bouts were under 5 minutes.

Endurance is tied to disease risk. When people are subjected to a six-minute walk test, where they see how far they can walk in 6 minutes, those with lower scores are more likely to suffer from or contract cardiovascular disease, lung diseases like COPD, arthritis, diabetes, and even cognitive dysfunction and depression. When people get worse at this test over the course of a year, they’re more likely to die.

How To Measure Your Endurance Under Load

Kennedy suggests performing a weighted march in place. Either holding dumbbells in your hands or with a weighted backpack or vest on, start a stopwatch on your phone and march in place, bringing your knees up to at least your waist.

When you start to see a significant increase in your heart rate, and you start to sweat, make a note of the time. And when you can’t march anymore, note that time, too.

Both of these times create benchmarks for your current endurance under load. Over time, you can keep track of how these times change as you retest.

How To Improve Your Endurance Under Load

Practice walking with weight. 

“Get on the treadmill and increase the speed of the walk with a dumbbell in hand or a weighted jacket on,” Kennedy says. “Push the boundaries up a little bit more, because it will help you carry bigger loads over time.”

This type of weighted walking burns 30-45 percent more calories than regular walking, and results in fewer injuries than running.

Train the Markers. Test Them Together.

These eight markers aren’t just things to measure. They’re things to train. That’s why we built The Super Age Games and a structured training program we’re calling the Super Age Standard. The Games and the Standard were developed with researchers at the Buck Institute for Research on Aging, and map to every marker on this list. You’ll get to test each marker, you’ll get a personalized longevity fingerprint. You’ll know where you stand, what to work on, and how to track your progress over time.

And then on November 7 in New York City, we’ll all join together at the Super Age Games: a first-of-its-kind event where you’ll move through eight trials, each one designed to measure a one of these longevity markers. We had so much fun designing these trials so they are challenging, but accessible, fun and research-backed. Join a community of people training for whole human longevity.

You can take our quiz to see if your workout is already training you for longevity. And then sign up for the Games to get access to The Standard training program. Then we’ll see you at The Games in November!

Join the Super Age Games →

We’re excited to announce that this year’s Super Age Games are sponsored by Altra, WHOOP, PUR, Braun and Neurotracker.